We Can Do Better than the House’s Version of the 2018 Farm Bill - May 25, 2018

This is the second blog post of many to come in our series on how we can build a better Farm Bill.

Last week’s version of the House 2018 Farm Bill would:

1) Legislate terrible SNAP cuts making more people ineligible for the program by counting family benefits such as heating assistance as income, and also adding onerous requirements that poor families can’t meet – such as copies of utility bills even for people with disabilities who may live in group facilities and lack such documentation. (We don’t like that, nor do our friends. Proponents say it won’t hurt children or families, but see what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had to say Here);

2) “Block grant” SNAP monies to the States to impose work requirements for adult SNAP recipients without regard to the local labor market, the prior existence of job programs in those places, or the actual cost to states of creating a whole new job training bureaucracy. (Please click Here); for more.

4) Slash Conservation Program funding including for small-scale family, diverse and veteran farmers and ranchers who seek to use sustainable practices and innovations to better address the environmental impacts of agriculture and climate change;

5) Slash Rural Development Programs

6) Impose a “Poison Our Waters Provision,” which eliminates Clean Water Act safeguards to protect farmers, farmworkers and communities from pesticides sprayed directly into water supplies.

7) Expand the ways corporate agriculture can evade environmental protections for the water and land.

8) Freeze or cut programs that are helping promote equity, instead of finding new ways to promote equity.